


I wanted words (but all I heard was nothing)

by EponineTheStrange (gallifreyandglowclouds)



Category: Doctor Who RPF
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-12
Updated: 2013-07-12
Packaged: 2017-12-19 06:39:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/880616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gallifreyandglowclouds/pseuds/EponineTheStrange
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Songfic based on 'Nothing' by The Script.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I wanted words (but all I heard was nothing)

Matt hasn’t been this drunk in _years._ He can’t feel his face, and the only sober bit of his mind is telling him that the bartender is about six inches from cutting him off. He’s also drinking alone, and before a flight to Detroit via Dallas the next day, which is a horrible idea. At least he’s mostly packed, so he can show up to the airport horrifically hungover without the risk of missing his flight or something terrible like that.

It’s when he’s walking out of the bar and he turns around and sees a guy walking with his girlfriend that he realises that he misses Karen a stupidly large amount. There’s nothing altogether special about the couple, but he notices his hand around her waist and her head on his shoulder that makes his heart ache a bit for whatever he and Karen had. (He then takes a step and nearly trips over the curb and faceplants. Someone points and laughs.)

He doesn’t know what his life has come to, precisely, for him to be drinking alone, because that is depressing, but it’s also been a pattern since September, because all of his friends are in committed relationships, or are on the other side of the ocean. Well, that last distinction actually belongs to the person that he really wishes that he could be in a committed relationship with. (Oh, reality.)

He knows that he has literally been within inches of telling her how he feels about her – the words have bubbled up in his throat and very nearly come out of his mouth, but whenever she turns around and says, ‘what did you want to say to me Matt?’, his resolve disappears because of Steven’s stupid rule or because he’s straight up afraid of what happens after he tells Karen precisely what’s happening in his head and his heart.

At the moment, there seems to be none of this fear, and he looks at his cellphone as he staggers through the streets.

“Should I do it?” He asks it. It’s a cellphone, though. It isn’t going to answer him. “Should I call her and tell her? Because it’s been nearly four fucking years and I don’t know whether this is the right time or not, but I think if I keep waiting I’ll never stop waiting.”

Matt sees a person on the other side of the street giving him a look that says ‘you really ought to be locked up in a padded room’. He waves to them.

“I’m going to do it,” he whispers to his phone, and then realises how sad it is that he hasn’t actually bothered to see her while she’s been in the UK, but he is about to leave her a drunken voice message confessing his undying love for her.

The sober part of his brain (and he’s convinced that it’s Arthur because it’s talking to him in Arthur’s voice) says that Matt’s being a massive idiot. (That he is, and he won’t deny, and he enjoys that bit of him. Arthur’s mental stability is incredibly boring.)

He dials her number, and predictably, because it’s one-thirty in the morning, she doesn’t pick up her phone. Karen has acquired semi-normal sleeping habits since she stopped hanging out with Matt so much.

“Hey, uh, Kaz, it’s me. Ummm, I’m a little bit drunk right now. Actually I’m pretty fucked up right now, because I don’t have my normal drinking buddy, who is you. I mean, I’d ask Jenna but she’s got her boyfriend – but you don’t really care about Jenna so I’m just not going to get in to that. Listen, I need to tell something, because I think it’s really important and I just need to say it and I know I’m really stupid for not saying this to you in person because hey! You’re around. And I’m in London and that’s like never happened almost ever. But I’m just like, hopelessly and irrevocably in love with you, and I need to tell you this because I’m just really sick of waiting and wondering when the right time is, and you’re beautiful and amazing, and… I love you, Kaz. Okay? Okay. I’m going to go back to my flat now. Nighty-night!”

He stumbles back to his flat and in to bed. 

* * *

 

Karen can’t find her phone, which is why she misses Matt’s call, and actually picks up after about ten seconds of super duper awkward voicemail.

She listens to it and her face falls throughout the whole thing, because she hasn’t come to expect much from Matt (like, there is no way he can think that she has no idea what he feels about her, especially when her mother is there with her looking at photos of the two of them together, which is an embarrassing experience that should be avoided at all costs) and she sort of sinks under the covers and hits save instead of delete at the end of the message, and starts beating up her pillow.

Like, really Matt? She’s mad because he made it so deliberately clear and obvious for those aforementioned four years that she was, in fact, in love with her, and then it takes him four years and one smashing night at the pub to actually say something to her about it. (She could hit him right now, so it’s a good thing that he didn’t decide to come to her place to give her that speech.)

If he’d said this to her even a year ago, when everything was a heck of a lot different for her, she might not have gone to Los Angeles at all in favour of starting something with him, because she’s had all of these little dreams and thoughts of life with Matt poking through her mind for ages. Now she knows how he feels about it (ostensibly), except it takes him a night of drinking to figure it out and man up enough to actually tell her.

It takes some of the shine off of the whole thing for her. She was thinking about calling Matt and seeing if he’d like to meet for lunch or coffee or something while she’s back in the UK, but that plan quickly evaporates from her mind.

Before she goes to sleep, she pelts her phone across the room, breaking it. (She’s not even that mad about it, she just doesn’t want to get drunk dialled by Matt again, because she won’t be able to handle that tonight. Or ever.)

* * *

 

The whole thing disappears from her mind after a few days, mostly out of necessity. She does not call him back, and he doesn’t call her again, and Karen manages to convince herself that he wasn’t being serious at all – it was a figment of Matt’s drunk mind and everything can just go back to being normal.

(Well, it isn’t precisely normal – they usually text about weird, mundane things, and now there is no texting about weird mundane things, because Karen’s got this weird fear-imposed force field around Matt.)

She doesn’t know that he reads her Twitter feed, and for that reason, would thus know that she’s in New York. And then, he’s at the Adult Swim Party, which is a surprise because she knows for a fact that Matt hates (with a burning, fiery passion) Kanye West.

So she’s staring at him from across the room, and suddenly there’s a path cleared between the two of them like in some kind of stupid dance movie, but Karen’s not dancing and Matt won’t either because he will end up in the A&E, but he’s staring at her from across the room, and she won’t lie, she’s freaking out a little bit.

So she turns and storms away from him, and Aislinn gives her a concerned look but she knows that she can’t be around Matt right now, so out she goes.

Matt follows her. (Argh. She’d honestly rather he not.)

“Hey, Kaz –“ he says, putting a hand on her shoulder.

She whips around and looks at him, eyes full of anger. “Don’t, Matt. Just don’t, okay?”

“What the fuck is going on?” Matt says. He is an actor, but granted, the look of shock on his face is pretty real.

“Do you not remember what happened a couple of weeks ago?”

He raises an eyebrow at her. “No, Kaz, we haven’t seen each other for ages –“

“You’re telling me you _don’t_ remember the drunken message you left for me?”

His face blanches. “Oh. That.”

“Yeah, that.” She’s breathing hard, and she’s pretty sure that her hand is clenched so tight around that pink purse of hers that the strap might never fully recover. “Where you told me you loved me?”

“Karen, I’m so, so, sorry about that,” Matt says, trying to take a step closer (she pushes him away). “I didn’t mean for that to upset you.”

“Fucks sake, Matt, what did you think was going to happen?” She yells. “Do you have any idea how different things could have been?”

“What – what do you mean, how different things could have been?”

“I would have dropped everything and anything for you,” she says. “If you’d told me all of this two years ago, even a year ago – I wouldn’t have left! I’d have stayed in the UK with you, but no, you didn’t say anything, and then had to drop it on me in a drunken voicemail. I can’t believe you!”

He just stands there, with his mouth open and the beat from Kanye West pulsating in the background. “ _What_?”

“But you know what, Matt?” Karen says, because now she is burning wth anger and not at all willing to let him off easy. “You had your chance. You had it with me, and you fucked it up because you proved yourself to be too much of a coward to actually do anything about it until you got yourself drunk out of your mind. We are done, Matt. _Done._ ”

“Karen, no –“ but he is interrupted with the crack of her hand slapping his face before she storms away, tears streaming down her face.

(Goddamn his stupid cheekbones. She’s going to need to ice her hand.)

 

* * *

 

To: kgillan87@hotmail.co.uk  
From: [matt.smith@gmail.co.uk](mailto:matt.smith@gmail.co.uk)

Kaz.

I’m an idiot, and I get that, okay?

What I did with the voice message was stupid and cowardly and all sorts of messed up, but it’s done, and I’m really, really sorry about it.

Everything I said there was sincere. I know you’re back in Los Angeles now, but is there any chance we might be able to talk?

-Matt

 

* * *

 

To: [kgillan87@hotmail.co.uk](mailto:kgillan87@hotmail.co.uk)  
From: [matt.smith@gmail.co.uk](mailto:matt.smith@gmail.co.uk)

Kaz, you’re killing me here. I think you ought to go in to a career as a boxer if the whole glamorous movie star thing doesn’t work out for you, because there’s still a mark on my skin from where you hit me in New York. (I don’t really care though, because beyond all of these emails that’s the closest thing I have to you.

(Oh, and there’s a picture of the two of us from when we were in New York the very, very first time pinned up in my flat. Man, those were the days, eh?)

I think that’s where I fell in love with you for the first time, you know? Like, there was always the ‘oh my god Kaz is really really fit’, but that’s when it really, really happened for me – the gradual instant, if you know what I mean? Like we were eating at the TARDIS restaurant and I kind of looked across the table and I had known that you’d stolen my heart completely.

I promise I am absolutely stone-cold sober right now. And I know I wasn’t when I left that message, but everything I said there was sincere.

Love you, Kaz. A thousand times over. (It’d be ten times better if you said it back but I’d take a reply if that’s all I can get.)

-Matt

* * *

 

To: [matt.smith@gmail.co.uk](mailto:matt.smith@gmail.co.uk)  
From: [kgillan87@hotmail.co.uk](mailto:kgillan87@hotmail.co.uk)

I do miss, you know. That doesn’t mean I’m not still a bit mad at you, but I miss you because you’re my friend that I also happened to have fallen in love with sometime in late 2011.

Listen, things are complicated right now, Matt, and I need to sort through some things. I’m not going to be able to come back and fall right in to this thing with you. (Well, I might. We’ll see how things are going.) I just need a bit of time and space, okay?

Love you, stupid face Smithers.

-Karen

 

* * *

 

To: kgillan87@hotmail.co.uk  
From: [matt.smith@gmail.co.uk](mailto:matt.smith@gmail.co.uk)

You can have all the time and the space (and everything else) from me, Kazza.

-Matt

 

* * *

 

Karen surprises him one day when he comes back to his flat from filming the Christmas Special. He’s bone tired, but one flash of her bright red hair fills him with energy and hope for a lifetime.

(They talk. They make tea, and then drink it. They cuddle up on the couch, and when Matt pulls Karen in and kisses her, she makes a strangled moan in the back of her throat and he swallows it.

Yeah, it’ll be good between them.)


End file.
